Fenton High School Board Meeting November 17, 2021

001check check i'd like to call the november 17 2021 regular meeting of the fenton community high school district 100 board meeting to order i may have a roll call figueroa here paid here jalwick redzinski here rhaegal ting po pong here that's four we have a quorum we have a quorum uh please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance mr ontanko please read our fenton belief systems mission advice and way statement fenton mission statement to cultivate successful passionate empowered learners through rigor relevance and relationships successful passionate empowered learners thrive when we provide a safe caring and welcoming environment diversity equity and inclusion unify our community school and home collaborate as one we champion innovative teaching engaged learning with the state of the art facilities we infuse social emotional learning into academics and culture we prepare

002students to fulfill their civic responsibility we immerse students in authentic life experiences the bison way students and adults at fenton high schools create a safe caring empathetic environment where we believe in each other respect diversity communicate openly grow together and hold each other to high expectations to become the leaders and innovators of the future thank you james recognitions okay good good evening we'd like to start out with honoring victor vasquez if you come up please with your coaches we'd like to honor victor his second year in a row finishing as a state qualifier all-state congratulations and we'd also like to look at all the support here your teammates are here tonight um but anyway during the november six state finals in peoria you took 15th place and all runners in the top 25 are considered

003all state runners and you have one more year left right okay we're going to be back here again this time next year okay good all right without further ado coach fritsch and coach earhart um so as dr benson said uh victor for a second year in a row was able to qualify for the state meet down in peoria um unfortunately last year the state meet was not held due to covert restrictions so this was actually his first year actually being able to compete there and i knew that you know from past experiences at the state meet that you know there's two types of races that go on there's the kids that go out trying to run the and finishing the top ten and then there's the kids that you know are able to hunt down

004those kids that can't finish in the top ten and i told victor that going to the state meet that your strategy that you've shown throughout the year of you know starting the first half of the race easy and finished in a race hard that's going to pay off at a at a race like uh the state meet and he was able to put together a race that you know in the last 10 years we've had a lot of guys had the opportunity to be all state he was the one guy that's been able to put that together over the last you know 12 years of my coaching experience it was a very proud moment as a coach it was a little nerve-wracking trying to figure out had he finished in the top 15. because i

005saw him about 200 meters to go he was about 20th place and he was able to move up over the last 200 meters or so and not only moving or stay in that top 25 but actually was able to pick off about 10 or 5 guys in the last you know 100 meters or so i don't know how much i can talk about victor how much he dedicates to his time outside of class he's a fantastic student but we always hear about people around town saying oh i saw that victor kid running around i always saw him in the morning before school and it just shows you the dedication and the hard work that he puts in not only during practice but outside of practice as well you know he's been our number one runner

006for the last two years now and i only can look forward to what he can hopefully achieve next year as a [Applause] senior just like to add that it's been a real honor to coach someone like victor um and that's why all his teammates are here they're hoping he can carry them into the state meet next year so there'll be seven or eight of us up here not just victor next year so we're looking forward to that and thank you so much for for the honor today [Applause] um i'd like to thank uh my team who actually came to support uh who made the season very enjoyable uh for every workout every run it would have um i can't i couldn't imagine running without them every day every workout i would like to thank coach

007fridge and coach erhardt for coaching me it was um i couldn't imagine what i would end up without it and also i would like to thank my brother who isn't here who's working but you also played a big part in coaching me too well said victor and now we're going to take a picture up front here if you don't mind all the way up front here yeah right over there where let's take one this one out of the way the whole team so guys just take a just kneel right in front of the group is all right [Applause] she's not here okay next slide please no no slide there we go tonight we would like to uh recognize and honor the chicago bear's donation to bensonville and wooddale 911 first responders fund for all of

008us who were able to make the september 11th remembrance program it was extremely memorable and i don't think any of us will ever forget it and we couldn't really have done it without the support of the chicago bears so we'd like to thank them this evening we'd also like to thank um nike corporation as they're a big part of it donating the t-shirts and obviously also duke blues and barbecue for donating the food for the event and here tonight we have first responders from bensonville in wooddale and i also believe some government officials so let's give them all a round of applause for attending this evening it's a tremendous show of support here tonight with with you all here sorry we don't have more chair there are a few seats open if you need to

009sit but um but anyway i'm going to turn it over to matt lynch who's going to say a few words and we'll carry it on from there matt thank you dr benson good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board of education administration on behalf of the finn high school football program i'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our honored guests village bensonville village of bensonville village president frank de simone village of bensonville village manager evan summers village of bensonville police chief dan schultz bensonville fire protection district battalion chief angel reyes city of wooddale mayor nunzio police city of wooddale police chief greg vista city of wooddale fire protection district chief james burke and um city of wooddale deputy fire chief john dao zhao at this time instead of me coming in and saying any

010more words i would like to introduce two of our football players zane binyad and richard chavez who would like to speak before you today [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board of education and administration my name is zane benayad thank you for this opportunity to stand before you today on behalf of the fenton high school athletic department and the fen high school football program i'm truly honored to be here presenting a check to the city of wooddale mayor police and city of wooddale fire protection district chief burke 20 years ago on september 11 2001 2996 lives were lost during the terrorist attacks 415 of the lives lost were first responders the events of 9 11 had an everlasting effect on the nation for not only the people who lived through it but for

011generations to come the class of 2022 is one of the first classes to consist of an entire student body sorry of an entire student body not yet born during the attacks despite this it's important to never forget the events that took place on that fateful morning but also never forget the the wrist first responders face every day we are truly thankful for all the work that goes into protecting our community and homes our thoughts and prayers are with you all each and every day i'm pleased to announce that the high school football program in conjunction with the chicago bears nike corporation duke blues and barbecue students residents of bensonville wooddell and american citizens from across the united states were able to fundraise through the sale of 911 t-shirts concessions monetary donations and monetary donations raised

012twelve thousand two hundred dollars for their first responders the village of bensonville the city of wooddale the bensonville fire protection district and the woodlow fire protection district it is with great honor that i present the city of wooddale and the wooddell fire protection district each a check valuing three thousand and fifty dollars to be used for the first responders thank you for your service to our community and may god bless you thank you [Applause] uh [Applause] at this time i'd like to introduce richard chavez um good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board of education and administration my name is richard chavez on behalf of the fenton high school athletic department and fenton high school football program i am honored to speak in front of you here today village president d simone police chief schultz

013and battalion fire chief reyes our thoughts and prayers are with you and all the first responders that risk their lives each and every day you see i don't know what it's like being a police officer a firefighter or a paramedic but i know it's more than just making traffic stops staying up late nights and handling small disputes the bravery and selflessness exhibited by first responders on a daily basis with the residents of bensonville wooddale and all communities across the united states of america is truly inspiring and heroic these men and women wake up each day not knowing what the day will entail or what is waiting on the other side of that phone call thank you and your families for the sacrifice you make daily for the residents of the communities being served and the

014climate we are currently living in today people forget first responders or ordinary citizens that have feelings and fears however first responders suppress those feelings and fears for the betterment of society i want to take this opportunity to say thank you on behalf of everyone who lives in the village of bensonville and city of wooddale thank you for everything you have done and thank you for everything you will do we send our prayers to your comrade and i pray god bless him his family and all first responders with his grace now it gives me great honor and privilege to present the village of bensonville and the bensville fire protection district each with a check for three thousand fifty dollars to be used for first responders thank you for your service and once again may god bless

015you and your families thank you yep how about before we we take some more pictures how about richard and zane we couldn't have said it better so thank you so much for coming to give them a round of applause and to our first responders one more round of applause to our first responders what they do every day up take a step to the right okay [Applause] thank you um okay before everybody leaves i would like coach matt lynch to come forward i know he does i know he doesn't want to but he needs to come on man um i honestly you guys have no idea how much time this man put in to this program the hours and hours meticulously planned meetings where he told us exactly how it had to be done right am

016i right yeah i'm right you know i'm right but but well but it was for the best i mean it was an incredible program uh it was his vision from the beginning and he saw what it would be and he put the he put the time in he put the effort in and i just want to thank him we're fortunate to have him as a teacher as a coach as a mentor and i just think we just need standing ovation for his efforts thank you man please well thank you dr benson and i guess i had no choice i've been dodging rick for a while here so i've been making excuses not to be here no thank you very much um you know i don't know if um mr tango remembers this but when we

017met when he came to hire me i i asked him two questions i told him two things i said one you have no idea who you're hiring and two that there be no one that's going to work as hard as i'm going to work for for kids and i truly believe that it is my duty as an educator and someone who's been paid by taxpayer dollars to give everything i possibly can to these kids and make sure they get the experience that they can take with them the rest of their life so i don't look at the hours i i never look at the hours i never look at what needs to be put in i look at the fact that we have young adults here that we have to prepare for this world and

018and that's my only mission is to make sure that when they leave here or leave anything that i do or any presence that i that i have is that i gave them an opportunity to grow so they can go be successful in this world and everyone always talks about the hours i don't the hours is nothing i mean i don't sleep so what am i gonna do with those hours so um so i might as well work and i thank you for all the support and everything we do in terms of the 9 11 ceremony um i was sitting in a high-rise on 525 south van buren and you know i overlooked the airport at that time you know from the old post office and on the 26th floor and on the 29th floor was

019the secret service and when those planes hit you have no idea what it's like to be in a building where you got secret servers scrambling and running around and shutting us down and not knowing that you know taking for granted watching those airplanes line up to go into a hair to watch them scramble to get down and then watch those f-16s take off i didn't know o'hare had f-16s and when they took off they took off and so we're scrambling and then to see the events and have friends in new york and and a couple of them who lost their lives and and the things that followed and transparent after that when 10 years ago when this vision first came to me and i first developed this program 10 years ago i knew that i

020always do it because to me every day first responders go they leave their home every single day they have absolutely no idea whether they're gonna return or not we don't talk about what they see what they endure they don't talk about it it's similar to the military you don't ask the military service member what they seen in war you don't ask first responders to live those events and for us to do this to me is the least that we can do so i i thank you for your service and you you have our our support and our prayers and i pray to each and every day that you go back home to your families because you deserve it so you know dr benson thank you board of education thank you administration thank you for all

021your support um it's truly appreciated um i'm just doing what i'm supposed to do because i'm being paid by taxpayer dollars that's all i'm doing thank you very much thanks again man our final recognition this evening is uh this month is uh board education appreciation month thanks guys for coming once again thank you thank you all thank you [Applause] that's hard to beat our next recognition here is um the board of education that's you folks here and this represents your work pretty much you know it's no one sees it behind the scenes no one knows how much how many hours you put in but to kid paul patty sylvia john and juliet a sincere thank you for your leadership as board members here at fenton community high school district 100 especially during these difficult and

022challenging times of global pandemic division and attack on public schools a sincere thank you for putting our kids first in supporting of all of our students centered programming whether it's the strategic plan whether it's the portrait of a graduate and other expanding the curriculum thank you for supporting our parents padres unidos polish outreach pto black student union parent conferences we see you there we see you present thank you for providing a safe and caring and welcoming environment for our students and staff each and every day your work matters your work is important we truly truly appreciate you again thank you [Applause] well that was fun i i just wanted to this wasn't on the agenda but um i we do want to thank the the city of wooddale the residents that came out for the

023shape of wooddale the annual event uh we had taxing bodies there um wanted to thank itaska bank and uh the mesh inc family for a host for being gracious hosts and also the wooddell junior high for uh providing the facility the beautiful arts auditorium so just want to get a quick shout out on that um what is on the agenda we have publicly public comments uh we have public comments we don't have any this evening no not today okay great what then we take it with james to informational items please thank you president uh we have a loaded uh agenda item here but i would like to introduce mr ed sullivan from eos consulting he will uh discuss the phase one report a quick summary there an update with the community engagement committee as well

024as the public engagement let's welcome ed well thank you some of my information out here so it's hard to follow that act uh that was an awe-inspiring it's a it's very neat to see um especially someone that all of us that have lived through 9 11 and knew where we were that that fateful day so i'm here um to go over the phase one report as you remember from our hopefully and i'm going to explain a little bit we do a four phase process to engage a community and get the community to you know input to the board and to the administration what they feel is the future in the future direction so this first phase we just finished phase one really you talk when we talk about phase one we're going with a broad

025approach we want to talk about the challenges we want to talk about the uh the successes of the administration in the school and the students and the board um and then we really want to move on into the challenges that are that they're faces phase two is really more the meat of what goes on where they can the community will see um projects they'll start to see numbers or start to see displays tax impacts and stuff like that but this first phase is so important setting up the second phase because we want to make sure we don't miss anything we don't see anything that potentially will cause you problems down the line and and what we're seeing and i'll get to that as i move along to the results at the very end it looks

026pretty promising phase three we take and everything builds on each other phase three will get more in depth into potential solutions to the challenges that are faced in the school and the district and then phase four is where we come up with a final solution that could be a hybrid of all three or four solutions um uh based off the community feedback so phase one uh really we talked about and in our um and our proposal to the board we we really covered messaging community uh committee public engagement and then um through all those we got feedback through these feedback forms and and i'm to go in through each one of these and then finally uh the feedback forms are really where we want to we want to discuss so messaging really was how did

027we get to this point um positives of the the district the challenges that they're facing and um really the path forward but why do we do messaging and that's really important we're going to change messaging through each phase but if you think about i guess the best way to put it as an elected official you keep them on point if they're in an election you want to keep them focused on what they're there for what they need to talk about and so that's the same thing here we don't want people going off into different directions and changing up the discussion points that we want to focus on to get us to the path of a community driven plan and so we put out the messaging hopefully we've all seen it we've pushed it on to

028um key influencers that's one of the things that that our company really believes in is you don't want your elected officials or your business leaders or your senior leaders or your um faith-based leaders to not know what's going on especially the electives because that's where i come from i wouldn't want to walk into a supermarket and say someone say hey you know what fenton's doing what do you think about that and and not know and so we really pride ourselves and it sounds like um we did a good job and bringing in wood dale mayor and um i think seven aldermen into the into the process so we've already started that which in reality we really focus on that in phase two so that's really been a good good a good part forward the community

029kitty committee is if you remember when we talked about how we gather data and this is all going to be a data driven process we want to get you as many data points as possible to say you know what the community truly believes the one way that we get it is your informed data points and so that informed is we have these 17 members in the community they come to a meeting they get to see the presentation that we also did to the overall community committee but they get to talk a little bit more they get to hear a little bit more detail and so we gauge where they are at the beginning of this process to where they are at the end of this process and what that does for us and for you

030is to say where you can go to potential referendum or not what it takes to get there because what you're trying to figure out is they hear something they learn about it and do they change their minds and how do we gauge that so that's the informed um the performed approach so and like i said that's direct input they had a meeting october 14th and x1 will be at the end of the month but they're also very important because they're segments of your community and we want different cross-based segments of your community and folks that um are are leaders in your community because we want them back out in the community talking we want them to be the leaders for us to their um friends and family and you know their community um talking about

031this process to get more information and collecting that and bring it back to us and so that's that's been very important to have a cross-section of the community to do this and then we we went on to public engagement and that's really just talking to the public inviting them in to have a presentation done by james and then really what's been really effective is going on a tour and seeing the facilities we really truly believe that will be something that will be very helpful in the long run and i can give you an example of how we kind of gauge that we did a community engagement for a different school district in 2018 and people really you know they talked about ada accessibility and so forth and you know it's nice everybody likes ada and

032sometimes when we go on on our surveys it kind of falls on on what people really want you know they want the shiny objects and ada is kind of like out there well we had a student that would have to go up a flight of stairs in a wheelchair and in essence have to drag themselves up the stairs and so when we put that out there people are like oh that really is something we need and so to visualize something is really an important process um where we have it and and it looks like we we certainly have capitalized on that and we will going forward and so um we had four meetings different days different times to get as many people in we had our information in spanish the last meeting was actually spanish

033meeting and so going forward we'll continue that to reach out to all segments of the community and like i said similar presentation the feedback forbes and this kind of leads into the next point were also in spanish as well and if i can find what i did with those and if you see them they're they're in a narrative form so this isn't we're giving you ideas in bullet points like pick one of those this is free free-flowing ideas so this is what do you think tell us it's not in essence if you give them bullet points of pick this this this or this then you kind of lead the discussion we wanted them to lead the discussion and they did a great job so we had thoughtful questions all the meetings that took place and

034and obviously the administration handled it and they had everybody out and i don't think and any question didn't get answered um so it really was a well uh well-oiled machine as we as we went through it and so we really got great feedback but after every meeting that we took whether it was a community committee meeting or it was the um the community engagement sessions or online surveys that we have through the website we gathered data feedback through this uh these forms if you will and we've put them together to try and tell you a little bit about what took place and i want to go through a little bit of that and hopefully you guys have that in front of you but i'll read the questions and then kind of talk about there's there's

035seven questions that we went through um some of them talking about the positives some of them talk about you know what you think the negatives are what the challenges are so i'll just go ahead and read these and talk a little bit about them because this is the data that we're going to start building the program off of this is the data that kind of leads us to the right direction and the first thing we wanted to say was were there no red flags that's that's phase one what what is the community thinking what do they think about the administration you know if if you have an administration or a school board that people are just upset with this is the phase that we would find out we clearly didn't see that here but they

036also were very in tune with what was going on so question one was really what are our schools what are our schools doing well the top three things really feed into the schools doing well in the and the parents and the residents know it academics had 19 communication 13 caring 13 in college prep that tells me that that people are in tune with what's happening here and and that's a good thing going forward because there's no red flags that um and we didn't think there would be but you know you've asked us to to look into these and so we have um so i need to go back and i apologize so feedback forms um we had 94 residents participate 61 completed forms so when i say 19 of the um of the total answers

037for question 1 19 and because we had to kind of bundle them where we thought they kind of worked together because it wasn't pick a b c d e or f it was tell us what you think so we cataloged those into like kind answers if you will and so that's where i'm getting 19 communication 13 carrying 12 percent of the overall responses overall responses were 61. um so it actually kind of works out of the 61 responses on 19 were academics and it seems like that doesn't quite work out that well but that is the kind of looks like this that we did so that's so that's good um question two what challenges do our schools face and so the top three facilities 38 percent of the questions said facilities classroom space 17 percent

038hvac 9 those top three answers if you will represent 64 percent of the of the responses for that question so what that tells us is um you already have a population within your school district that understands the challenges that you guys face and so that makes the job a lot easier to try and get to an end point of where we should be what should we be funding what should we be doing um and so we're very very uh excited to see that number because you know it's not just us saying we need to do x y and z it's them telling us yeah we think that's um a big challenge that the school has faced uh question three was what challenges and improvements would you like to see in our schools so once again

039we see a lot more of the same um support for the path forward for the facilities plan that you guys have have put out there so what challenges and improvements would you like to see to our schools um the top five answers all had to do with facilities plan larger classrooms 16 hvac 14 health and safety which you know generally we always see health and safety as kind of a big especially in the years of what's been taking place in schools health and safety has always been a top five and in this case it's top three updated facilities and athletic facilities and so once again you have a populations that's in tune with the needs of the school um so that's the second general question if you will and like i said in phase two

040we'll narrow this into and i i could talk more about that when we have questions we'll more narrow this into actual individual projects where people will see a little more meat on what's going on let's see here oh i skipped over question 2b what could we do better um so this is a question that that we like to see because it could tell us a little bit about what's going on in school a little bit what's going on in administration and the school board and it's something that you can take beyond a referendum um we will be answer asking more of this as we go along um in the future as well and as i said when colin i first came to speak to you we said when we leave here we want you in

041be better shape than when we came and some of this data as we move forward will be something that you can you can look so what could we do better um updated resources 20 athletic facilities once again something that is on the minds that we've seen now three times of the community and also matches with what your facilities plan is communication with teachers and parents nine percent hvac is back up there so our discussion points on really hot and really cold i think has already resonated with the uh the folks that have showed up uh question four what resources do teachers and students need to be successful okay and so this is another one of those questions where as we leave you have this data you know what what they're going to be looking at

042and once again it also really supports the infrastructure plan as well but you can take this data beyond here and so the top uh answers that we got were technology and so once again what resources do our teachers and students need to be successful technology that would be pretty much everyone would say that because we are in a society where technology drives everything so 28 of the respondents had technology 14 said space and 10 percent uh said life safety eight percent said state-of-the-art facilities and so we're still seeing a lot of this discussion within this these groups of people of the facilities plan and the idea of what the needs are for the district so then we started to talk a little bit about um what are the what are they willing to invest what

043are they willing to do uh how engaged will they be and so this starts to ask the question and transition into projects and transition into costs and tax dollars which transitions well into the next phase question five is are you willing to invest more in our schools to achieve some of the improvements discussed today so are you willing to invest in your schools to break it down yes maybe or no well 68 said yes and so it's a generic question don't get me wrong it's a generic are you willing to invest more yes that is great feedback um maybe got okay so they want to hear more uh and and i completely understand that because we're asking a broad-based question of are you willing um what i really like to see here is the no

044is two percent so only two percent of the respondents said no i don't want to invest um that's really good data that's that's um an engaged community in in my book they like their administration they like their border board of education they like their schools and so they're willing to invest in it if we had a problem that maybe we didn't know about it it would show up here it would show up of them saying no i'm not i'm not giving them a dime um and so that's what we like to see here and that's why your yes number is so high and your no number is so good is so low and that's that's a great value so the next question uh does not surprise us and and the question is if so how

045much would you be willing to invest monthly how much is fair and appropriate for our community so once again broad-based all right so yes you're willing to invest how much um we don't really give them an answer um we let them kind of say to themselves and so this doesn't surprise us the highest number is um not sure uh and so that's 33 that they're just not sure need more information that that is exactly what we would expect um can invest time that's a unique response um can invest time i don't know if they thought maybe all right if this is going to be a referendum i'd love to help um so that that was an interesting um the next one is as much as possible uh you know once again broad base that's 10

046so those are the top three um it drops off and then we had some other responses that were 18 in phase two this question will become more uh evident because we will then start putting projects these projects will have advantages and disadvantages these projects will have price tags from those price tags or those projects we're going to pick 10 of them we've we're just starting to work on that as james knows we just finished that today going into phase two we will put four infrastructure solutions from renovation to expansion to new to doing nothing or something like that um and we'll put price tags on that and then we will say what's it going to cost to fund these are you willing to spend a lot a high a low a medium and so we'll

047do four of those and those will have total funding levels along with tax impacts based on an average house and a 25-year bond payment so those will go out there so this question six will really start to you get traction you'll understand what's going on people will start to lay it out where they're falling what their um what they're willing to invest in and so question five and six will really go together and we'll get we'll get some great answers um that's the assumption that we're gonna make that going forward and then question seven really um once again it's another question that helps you going forward uh let's say that the referendum doesn't pass or or you don't go to referendum and you know you might choose not to i mean that's we're not down

048that far down that path yet and the question is so once again question five was are you willing to vest question seven is if not which improvements should be prioritized in the current budget and which should not be pursued how should projects be prioritized and so you know it's interesting we the answers we get really goes along with lines of what they're still thinking they still want health and safety hvac desk chairs renovation space athletic facilities are the top answers so health and safety 36 percent hvac 13 renovations 13 space um so that gives you an idea and it gives us an idea you know as we build a final plan some things are going to rise to the top some things are going to fall to the bottom those that rise at the top

049and those who fall in the bottom might still be needs that the administration has pointed out but as you move forward what do you stress you know what do you if you if you decide as a board to go to referendum um the next phase would be how do you win how do you engage your community how do you present information well you want to lead with your strong suits obviously you don't want to lead with your with those that haven't really made the top and so this question helps us with that as well but we will go further into this question in the next phase um phase two is is really the the the nuts and bolts where um the community can start seeing what does this mean what what is this whole process

050about um there will be boards that people can see there'll be questions answered and then from there we'll take those responses and narrow it down to three or four what's what's our game plan what's our plan what's our community driven plan that the public has told us based off of what the needs from your facilities assessment so it's not like we're not using facilities and we're we're telling them these are the needs but then they're telling us what are the priorities and so that will help you as a board make decisions going forward and and then obviously phase three we we will do another survey um phase one we'll you know same thing we'll do five community engagement sessions we'll put this online we'll push this out we'll be working with the municipalities and all

051that to push this out to get as much data feedback as possible and we'll move forward from there so i've been talking for a long time so i'll let you guys yes the presentation um talked about some of the challenges and so you know to some degree they're hearing the challenges and maybe that's influencing a little bit but uh yeah so mainly from the um community engagement obviously we had online but yeah the community engagement is the most i think the spanish knight produced 22 of these responses which is phenomenal there's times you just don't in what we found and i don't remember if i talked about this but we've done a lot of minority focused districts minority majority and what we've always found when you engage folks they're happy to be engaged because they

052a lot of times they're just they're kind of swept aside and feel slighted so we really really really try to focus on bringing in minority participation to make sure that they're engaged and quite frankly that that has i i can tell you one of we did berkeley school district and we were a little worried about that referendum quite frankly it was right when covet hit and things got shut down and then the election took place um i i believe minority participation put us over the top um it was i mean i shouldn't say that we won pretty well but uh we have done polish we've done spanish we've done russian um you know however we want to move forward or we're happy to to do it i mean there's a little bit more cost involved

053with having to translate um i think the spanish we did in-house because we have a spanish-speaking person on staff can we get somebody in polish to represent that i think if we're going to invest that much time when we do a polish night there's usually two three four people there when we do a spanish you know we're 65 latino actually our esl speaking students that are polish there's one so our parents do speak that language we do not see that language barrier there with with its parents now if we if we want to be a thorough yeah i'm sure we could look into it but that's what our data is showing us okay uh um night or uh bsq has something parents come out to that you know like is that is there an opportunity

054to present during those times or does it have to be so if we have um going forward we're happy to come to a club or if you have a segment of your um community that might have a big meeting typically it's seniors but we're more than happy to come out there and especially on let's say the process goes through and in march the board of education decides to go forward that backside of education is really the best time for um you know and we can work with the administration to put together a plan if you want however you know we've done all sorts of you know the core strategy side running the actual referendum i can talk about this now because you haven't voted on it i couldn't talk about this once you vote but

055those are the rules but you as a board of education and the superintendent and administration can put forth an education program during the campaign you just cannot say yes vote or no vote and believe it or not you can't say no vote it's odd obviously you wouldn't be doing that but so that's the best time to do it but at the same time if you know that you're going to have these clubs or something at the very least we can put together a flyer to say hey here are our five engagement sessions please make one of them so at the very least we can do that but if you have a big a big event where a lot of people will be there and you want to put down some type of abbreviated presentation or

056the full presentation doesn't matter to me but i'm assuming if they're at an event they're doing something but um an abbreviated presentation we could put together very quickly and so just let us know and we're happy to everything we do is customized for every district and so some things work in other districts some things don't work in this district and so we are very ready to change on the fly and if that takes a meeting that comes up just let us know yeah and i think it's fair to say too we originally had three scheduled meetings we've added to just to your point sylvia mind you even though it's an english presentation we do have spanish-speaking individuals they're ready to translate between myself and jose at all of the meetings there but absolutely that makes

057sense that's part of the there was a pas de cernidos meeting and we were saying hey look we got to reach out to our community there's really 50 60 people there um so we just took advantage of that but definitely we'll continue to audible and and uh uh really take advantage of uh those situations yeah when it comes to data collection so this is where we're at we're trying to gather data and um i would just um i'm sure you're doing a great job and we're we're just probably wanting a fair representation demographically uh looking at every part of the community to make sure we get their voices heard sure yep no that is our you have to because um the reality is your parents and people associated with this building this uh school only

058make up about 28 to 32 percent of the electorate out there so if you're not getting out to the electric electric um you know it could be bad results down the line and quite frankly we want to do this because as i said you need to have the most advanced information possible to make the decision we're here to help you we're here to make sure that when we leave one you guys can do it yourself but two you you know the wishes of the community and you know we don't want to let's say we do go to referendum we don't want to win 51.5 49. that causes you guys problems on on many levels and so we haven't had a close vote you well except for one way we lost but we've done pretty good

059at that job because we we really are focused on i that want to re reiterate what ed was saying earlier you know i like to say this i speak a little italian you know is el matimatico is known an opinion on it right mathematic is not an opinion you could present whatever you want until you blew in the face but man 100 that tour is no doubt you can just walk without saying anything anything is just there 100 percent we did have some negative talk during the presentation hey what is this all about bluff but man go on a tour 20 30 minutes they said i'm for this whatever this is i'm for it so that's the kind of data that's not on that piece of paper okay um i know leo was at present

060presentation and and john was there as well so um but we do have some slides so you know what the presentation looked like for the folks that have intent but i mean all the administrators any feedback from there because these guys stay up those last night up here with me and we're there on those tour i know michelle doesn't like to go to the locker rooms you know for some reason but but any other feedback from that sam no i would i would just say i mean the the data's the data i mean i think people even if they had questions that they asked it professionally it was the vibe was was positive i know they that's hard to quantify but i mean i think people they were interested they're engaged they were open i

061i didn't see any like outright resistance or like a lot of shaking of the head or anything like that so i thought and i agree with that i'm no expert but i think there would be more data here with questions and concerns in some form and i know we're only in phase one but i think phase one is definitely a positive right now leo you were also there at the uh father's day dispatch any feedback there so our your fellow board members can hear from you well excuse me they were eager to uh to participate uh they had us they were asking how we can help you uh how much we can invest in this can i have a shovel let us know what to do and are willing to help you and please uh

062keep us informed how this process is how we're gonna proceed what is next and just keep us in the loop and they were eager to start not today but tomorrow you know and and so this data when we ask how much would you be willing to invest what you just said makes a little bit more sense from the can invest time um you know so we have answers can i invest time can i help how can i help and that's pretty sure what those came from and one thing about the data you know these tours were great and we're going to use them in the next phase as well but these answers were done pre-tour yes and so that's makes this data even more compelling because you go through the tours i'm sure we would

063have much different better data um so we have great data and then people took a tour and we got data after the fact that that should be different um and more positive and so that's what makes us even so much better and we've already had a meeting and discussion about how we incorporate film and and video and so forth because that's that's going to be a selling point going forward absolutely i know for sure that's why i asked about the age deaths my daughter will call me bring a jacket or something or sure there's there's no doubt your your comment is truthful for uh spot on because the data tells us that how do these parents know so much and they're so engaged because their students are engaged they're they're their children your students um

064so yes you're 100 correct you know but uh sometimes as a parent i don't believe what my kid says when uh they said they complain about the lockers they complain what they need and as a father i assume that they are just putting excuses i'm serious because i was in that side because i got two kids that they went over here my son was complaining my daughter was complaining about the music room and uh first of all i said well that is excuse because you don't want to learn and i'm coming with them since they were in kindergarten so i passed all the weight for uh chippewa i was part of the um stage for the remodelation of yoga and i went to well we were together blah and then over here advance fenton but

065the most strange thing is they were complaining about the installations and i assumed that it was just excuses but when we walk in we see the difference a lot of parents they were saying as these installations where they were when they were built i said 50 years ago so they don't even know believe me they don't even know they they were not aware of what's going on because they see a beautiful school in the outside but they never work in the inside so kids can help but sometimes as a father as a mother we're gonna say they are excused to perform that well sure yeah no i mean all this taking the thoughts of all these parents is literally what we're trying to do as many as possible and we'll continue to and you'll get

066a lot more data in the next phase next two phases for sure any other questions guys okay thank you thanks ed okay yep no worries thank you [Applause] except now with that it's fair for i know what the two board members showed up for with the presentation i'm there's about 28 slides of the presentation i want you to see it i'll tell you what it is it's celebration first okay or celebration then our challenge is an opportunity like as ed said all right so i'll shot machine gun through this so it started off this first light about 28 of them uh hey look we're we are passionate successful learners here at fenton high school we're succeeding bottom line our graduation rate has gone up our freshman on track ap district of the years not just

067academically but also uh extracurricular um sixth state champion in the last three years that correct right up six chevy's champion are we're committed to equitable practices and where does that show uh we're talking about low income uh student of poverty here uh college readiness 24 much higher than the state graduation rate much higher by 16 of all of illinois so these are facts these are successes our staff are passionate through rigor relevance and relationship we have loving and caring staff coaches administrators to assist with their students and this is recognized for example our former board member president um paul wiedemann was recognized as well as our teachers and coaches kind of like matt coach lynch today um we have a uh average class size uh that is uh 22.1 one of the lowest in in

068dupage we're a safe school both social emotionally internet cyberspace as well as bricks and mortars fenden unites the community not only do we educate and provide learning for our students but also our our parents with adult basic education we have practicing needles polish outreach bsu and adult basic education program and we invite our senior citizens here for free extracurricular activities like plays like football games like soccer and so forth uh finn has been a res sense of a strength of in the community in regards to the global pandemic 000 250 000 free meals during the pandemic and about 7 200 members were vaccinated we were the first to vaccinate in the state of illinois our parents first responders you know the story there finis committed to transparency and timely communication we were not surprised that

069they were very happy with the communication here at fenton that was not the case maybe seven eight years ago but we have weekly monthly and annual letters going out there we're active in the website and social media we have taken important steps to make our district more fiscally responsible five years straight on budget with with slight um revenues there uh we have one of the lowest bond and interest rate fund in the in the tax rate among dupage high school students we are the lowest by the way and fitness overall tax rate is significantly lower than the state okay even with all of this we have challenges and this is where the challenges come and opportunities come we have a 1950s building but our second rate facilities are keeping our students from reaching their full

070potential pictures of you could show this as much as you want but until they see it with their own eyes everywhere it's more powerful mechanical plumbing electrical they know we got a flooding issue that picture right there in the far right of our left here it just shows you where the street is and where fentons is look at that that's about six feet there uh small classrooms small and outdated cafeteria in the hallways security systems are old and archaic cracks in our floors cracks in our playing field indoor and outdoor once again uh inconsistent hvac some rooms are warm some rooms are freezing safety concerns in general this holds our students and teachers back in academics and extracurricular we even as you guys know we don't we can't host a soccer game there we can

071host a soccer game here or a track game here in tennis for a while because of those tennis courts as you know our kids deserve better with improved facilities uh and safe facilities our students will perform better they'll have the newfound sense of pride that comes off with attending a school with 21st century learning environment just like students and do uh in dupage county like your elmer's your hinsdale lake park leiden quite frankly you know it and i know it's you're like we have one of the the the most second rated uh facilities in dupage they'll reach their full potential through blended learning stem extracurricular and sports they'll have more opportunities to follow their passion graduate healthier more well-rounded and ready for high-wage careers the 1950's building as you know was 1950's curriculum with 1950's

072job we're in 2021 we need 2021 education we need 20 21 facilities so we could have jobs and careers what they had in 1950s some of those careers don't exist anymore what will happen in 2030 40 that starts here and what we offer for our kids if these are the futures we want for our children we must act now every year the improvements needed at our school becomes more expensive the longer we wait and the less we will be able to do you know that a hundred dollars now is not a hundred dollars two or three four ten five twenty years from now that's why we have launched a comprehensive community engagement process working together and sharing our ideas and passion we will create a road map for the future of fenton today is part

073of the formal community engagement efforts that will become be conducted through march 2022 to develop a plan for the future of our schools that is driven by the community that's what ed's talking about this extensive collaboration will ensure that our final community driven plan is fair fiscally responsible and reflected of the wishes of the community we stop there for questions then they do the survey survey then they go on a tour and that's where we adjourn that was the presentation it takes about two hours that they want to stay i'm like oh it's ten o'clock i gotta go sam was laughing he's like no it's really that uh i mean it's powerful we need all of our citizens to go through here right i had two parents uh tell me that they were like you

074know they're talking referendum um but until they took the tour they yeah once they took the tour they were like oh yeah i'm on board as and as you know we had elected officials they were saying the same thing so those those those are very positive and we'll continue edwards talk about movies and videos i mean our kids are going home they're telling the community what's happening here so very very competent board so you you've heard some of the phase one stages there but i just want to reassure you we're on the right path we are passionate we're your administrators 100 this is the right thing to do in which phase will the dollar amount be two and three that's in a month that's two weeks bruce yes two weeks yes so in fairness we

075had the city of wooddale then when are we having the village of bensonville i'm still waiting on that email sir but that's from them yeah that's i just want to make sure that we're you know we cover our bases we don't want to alienate everybody we've always been very good about that you know we invited them that's on them when they get here together and just to jump in yeah that was a very good i mean the wooddale officials that were there there are a lot of them it's a really good discussion a lot of really good questions so that was a great idea and obviously i agree john loved to do the same thing with bensonville so bensonville officials like our fire chief they know the building you know that john also city officials

076know the building yes because they had kids here as well so even still i just let's i'm with let's be transparent let's be equal let's make sure we service two communities we service both communities we made the offer when they get scheduled to get scheduled as long as we made the offer i've been known to be pushy so i'm just giving i'm giving them some grace persistent thank you maybe after turkey great question there any questions anything else no i mean i think thanks for ed for coming out tonight um i think we're we're moving the right direction uh chamber of commerce is i know you mentioned business leaders so we've got you know taxing bodies we've got i thought that was poignant when he said just overall community uh leaders so faith leaders too

077yes um are we good so equity we keep on going moving on to equity report with mr borrago jimmy can't hello everyone i'm mike brago and this is our equity report let's kick things off by talking about the amazing things our students are doing our asian student association successfully hosted a dance party in honor of navrati a hindu festival those who attended learned traditional folk dance called dandiya ross asa also hosted a mindful meditation session on the morning of november 4th mrs rajendran and her crew did a great job and those in attendance are asking for more the association of latinx and allies students aka alas put together an ofrenda in honor of dia de los muertos or day of the dead staff and students were encouraged to bring pictures of their loved ones and

078honor them on the ofrenda this month's celebrations include native american indian alaska native heritage month on november 4th diwali from november 13th to november 20th is trans awareness week and the end of the week november 20th is transgender day of remembrance the equity podcast club hosted a second lunch discussion around indigenous people's day and the rise of indigenous indigenous voices which discussions took place on the importance of acknowledging the voice and history of indigenous peoples mrs toe mrs rajandran and mr mitchell is hosting the third session on november 17th session two of grading for equity book study took place on november 1st cohorts discuss topics around the case for changing approaches to grading biases in traditional grading practices and ways that possible changes can empower students and instill growth mindset a big thank you to

079all the instructional coaches for engaging our teachers in meaningful conversations great discussions have taken place in our conduct committee meetings around student voice the committee of staff and students are diving into topics such as dress code disciplinary step systems and restorative practices thank you mr maitland mr castro for facilitating the conversations finally our district equity leadership team of 38 members is planning an end of the semester meeting to review and present our current status and future plans for each of the strand in our equity action plan that wraps up our equity report until next time have a great thanksgiving holiday let me make this a little bigger wait let me put on my glasses okay the positivity rate is at two point seven percent next slide picture tells it all right there um uh in

080regards to the covet cases we want it to stay there we don't wanna spike uh like it did uh last november but we know the vaccination is working this is the uh basically the age levels there and i really can't see that let me see 0 to 19 is the highest which is the red and the lowest are 80 and older they're about 90 percent vaccinated okay next slide please this pediatrics zero to four is the blue red 15 and 19 and zero to four i'm sorry five to 14 is screen and uh dr redd is our studio 15 to 19. thanks this is hospitalization fantastic speaking to some of the leaders here that's what we wanted you can see the double level there so we want to continue to go get lower and lower

081so there's more hospitals next slide depths okay and our fed numbers number one the first graph says that all in the last three weeks we had three students that testified that kovic and two teachers last three weeks staff staff uh those are the numbers uh that so far any questions was that right where it was the the younger younger younger children that are getting coveted they're getting infected can you could yeah okay that's probably they weren't they're they are out john but they weren't vaccinated until two right yeah zero to four they're they're more at home up to fourteen they just started their vaccinations so it'll take time for that to catch up okay um moving on let's see what do we got uh real quickly uh board of education vacancy as promised we notified

082the roe right after that board meeting in october we had the press release next uh the next day as well website emails went out to our folks to to see if there are anyone interested in becoming a board member social media all done on october 25th application was available was also october 25th application deadline is november 29th a good month there uh plenty of time for folks to to to decide if they would like to join and uh to be a candidate we will on december 15th next board meeting we will vote and seat the new board member so more information to come on that closed session open lunch pilot dr benson great thank you next next slide please okay so we are looking to open lunch and obviously the term pilot we're going to

083try this out we're looking at starting the second semester so january the 4th the purpose is allow seniors so i'm going to emphasize that seniors open campus during their lunch period the reason would be to create additional space obviously during the pandemic we're continuing to look at our our distancing even during lunch periods and it's going to provide us even more space as seniors are able to either go home for lunch go to a local restaurant to have lunch we will also have a grab-and-go type option so if someone wants to grab their lunch and then go home and eat lunch and come back that's acceptable too we worked on a parent permission form that we would actually look at sending out the end of november based on on feedback and also we're going to

084evaluate it as we go and then see how how we're doing and then see how we're doing in february and then kind of go from there so we we do have a system that we have ready to go we've been meeting for months because we knew that this would be a possibility for us obviously uh during the pandemic any questions i would just add to that part of the logic besides social distinct spaces here it's crowded to begin with before pandemic right kids were eating outside in the patio we had the tent out there it's too cold now right that tent is gone right now so you have more kids that 50 or 70 kids that went out there must go in so that's a concern for us also again just to reiterate what dr

085benson was saying this is a pilot you know we'll assess if it doesn't go well shut it down after 20 days we got to give it a shot and once again it's parent if mom and dad says no you can't go it's not all seniors i i personally believe there won't be that many takers but hopefully significant significant enough to reduce to gain more space it's a space issue folks right it's not more tables right we can put as many tables as here but we need to spread out and kids need that space as well so that's why we're going to go with this pilot any questions on that to make sure it's clear not that i know patty leo yeah how long is the lunch period 45 45 minutes oh okay yeah longer than

086i thought it is time to get out get something get home and get back exactly other high school yeah it's a great point yeah by 45 minutes there is adequate time the other thing is obviously our kids typically aren't eating for 45 minutes let's be honest so there is some milling around and other things and talking to people which we're not opposed to but you know it's that sort of that unstructured time that uh you know it'd be nice to make sure we have more space and distancing available and that unstructured time though is critical because they don't get that right yeah i mean i'm totally in favor of it yeah socialization then right how are you how are we anticipating or managing let's say ubereats or doordash or things like that well that's a

087great point one we we have more detail than what we're showing here tonight but these are good questions so what we would do is we outside food needs to stay outside so what we don't want is someone going to popeye's sorry james i didn't that's my fault i know don't take any offense by that um but somebody go to popeyes come back with a sack of chicken and then eat in the cafe that's not what we're looking for okay it defeats exactly so you keep the outside food out and then uh and then so we have a a system plan where and we don't want like you said defeat the purpose don't go out for 20 minutes and then necessarily come you know take your time have a good off-campus experience hopefully come back on

088time clearly but always stay away come back next period well yeah that's that's another way to put it but that's sort of the idea is i mean i think it's fair to say too this is not a novel idea during the pandemic other high schools are doing 2 11 through 14 some of the bigger right we talked to other schools that have done this for a while and it makes sense let's give it a try if we have adequate time and they're doing it with parents permission we got to try it we got to exercise our options i i think it's a good idea it could it could boost businesses too some businesses locally appreciate thank you thank you got the questions we're excited the kids will be excited as well and once again these

089are seniors next one is uh true green and geothermal once again folks this is just an update it's in its neophyte stage and i put it bright red note explicit stage nothing concrete yet okay so really a good start here but moving forward we know we got to go with clean air energy we're exploring clean energies and solar panel and geothermal as you know in illinois it's all about solar or wind but we can't do wind here or geothermal which is uh heating and cooling fenton is exploring solar energy and geothermal heating and cooling why it's part of our strategic plan sustain and sustain the future which is basically finances way to save money okay and the right thing to do as well there's a new illinois energy law and future green consortium what is

090that all about the clean energy jobs act um was approved august 2020 really for schools to take advantage of this energy clean energy in particular like i said it's about solar panels on our massive roofs we got thirty three hundred thousand tommy three hundred thousand square foot foot here plenty of roof space okay and what's nice with this new law especially for public education they want education to start incorporating this initiative there's no money up front for the district no bond to sell no levy bruce you must be happy with that no cash no installation no insurance costs no maintenance the cost as well future green which is just of um companies will cover the cost how do they how do they how do we save money what's really what's the bottom line saving comes

091from delivery and supply of energy okay they don't have to use the wires anymore right it's all here there's energy is not transferred anywhere or delivered it's within our campus if we move in that direction and we're going to learn more about it they will be at the triple i conference i signed up already it's a nine o'clock swiss hotel uh if anyone would like to join me to hear more about that they're also going to talk about electric buses as well another thing i think we got we put everything on the line we look at everything here and listen to what it what it says um i've spoke to other individuals uh like hundley school district um uh there in what town is that mchenry county um they're saving 250 000 on um on

092their energy bill as well uh geothermal michelle do you remember that in mchenry which we visit as well with the cooling of water and heating of water there are also hundreds of thousands of savings and just year after year after year it's there so it's our time to take a look especially if we're planning to do some capital projects yeah i would think we need to coordinate with them with our capital projects because i'd hate to have this go in and then we remodel and it creates a disruption because somehow i don't think it's always going to be free correct you know so we got to we got to coordinate this right we may have to delay it you know just right so we don't create problems right right john you hit it right in

093the nose um there was definitely they reached out to all the superintendents um it's not going to be always free pretty soon and they're encouraging school districts to get on the queue get online and to make sure you take advantage of this opportunity that's what we're going to look at triple i folks once again i'm going to put the plug on that let's go and watch that one yeah i'll go with you james that's the end of my report okay next is uh our consent agenda and we start with the tax levy no financial reports any questions okay so if you don't have any questions may have a motion to approve the consent agenda is presented so move i'll second okay can i get a roll call figueroa yes paid yes yes and motion passed

094next is our discussion items and uh we'll go with the tax levy 2021 tax levy may have a motion that the board of education adopts the following 2021 tax levy resolutions and certificate as presented resolution authorizing final aggregate tax levy for a year 2021 resolution authorizing and directing certain special purpose tax levies for the year 2021 and certificate of compliance with truth and taxation law i'll make that motion second okay thank you can you get a roll call well bruce could you just recap it really quick sure sure thank you uh last month we presented on the estimated tax levy um for the 2021 levy that is um it would be an increase of about 3.89 and that's compared to the 2020 extension um we don't uh it will not exceed five percent so there's

095no need for a uh hearing public hearing so we're not required to do that um and it's unchanged from october so this uh levy uh final proposed levy provided tonight here is is the same as what you saw last month so we're recommending uh to approve the two resolutions as well as the certificate to move this process forward and then we would file it accordingly with the county of dupage okay so we got a first motion a second can we get a roll call please mary yes paid yes galloway yes rudzinski yes figueroa yes tinkpop yes and motion passed on that next is the shared services report questions reviews anything like that bruce can you refresh me on what this is i can't get it but i'm not um you mean the levy i understood

096believe it or not no fair question sure um uh it's included in our annual financial report as well so just to see but we pulled this out it's required to be acted on uh separately by the board but it really is an attempt to improve fiscal efficiency um through shared services or outsourcing of services so if you look on the report there that's straight out of the annual financial report it kind of lists all the things that we do to either collaborate or poolsharing basically and recording it our insurance yes it is that simple yep okay then i didn't understand it just it just didn't sing the flow right yeah yeah that's that's all it is the shared services outsourcing and reporting out on it and what we do but part of the process is

097done to approve it by the board and that's where we're at tonight so may have a motion to that the board of education approved the reporters on the shared services now sorted before the fiscal year ending june 20th june 30th 2021 thank you can i get a roll call galloway yes yes figure out yes yes yes and motion passed next on the agenda is the unit ventilator installation did we want to review that or are we clear on that you know i so so str we put out bits right for this in particular yeah we sought out proposals yeah okay and but um i was kind of confused but they so we went to them and said you guys approve of this bit i mean like what yeah we we've worked with them we you

098know we're this is kind of an ongoing overall you know air quality improvement year for us you know we have some funds from the esther funds that we're using to fund these initiatives and the ionizers you probably remember a couple of months ago the board approved that that's been installed throughout the building this this particular area classroom is kind of a off on an independent classroom almost if you will that needs some attention and better airflow better quality better you know purification that type of thing so it's an independent standalone unit ventilator that would go in this classroom um that would you know improve the air quality in that in that yeah for this there was a sense of urgency i'm not that there isn't for everything but for this in particular this is the

099chemistry this is for that yes right that unique room and so there was a sense of urgency to move and we had the funds available so but i'm just like so we just approved yeah we did we worked with str architect um obviously you know we uh purchased the unit itself so we saved by directly purchasing that from the manufacturer we're still waiting for it to come in but this is for the is it on the barge in california yeah uh actually they're out of elmer's i'm not sure but hopefully uh we hope to get it by you know our break winter break but this is for the installation portion of it so we worked with them they they drew up the plans the drawings to install the unit and we needed their expertise to

100handle that and they helped us uh seek seek out bidders and that's where we're at so we had three proposals come through um we've worked with all these contractors before we we're solid with them so um so who says not remember it says you know deductible or deductive alternate one two three but not recommended yeah we we looked at well it was some additional things for pat's work and um replacing some flooring we decided to save some money to do that internally on our own so that's why we're doing that 5400 savings so we wanted to drop that as much as we could so it's five thousand four hundred five thousand four thank you yes so this'll you know looking at the architecture looking at possible changes to our building and upgrades this will fit

101right into the process this won't be i mean this will just acclimate right into the let's say any renovations or new updates that we do um we're hopeful but but it'll fit in with our initiative to improve the air quality throughout the district right now it's hard to predict i mean we can't like i said there was a sense of urgency here to get this particular unit in and and done um whether it will mesh with the overall hvac a new potential hvac system we'd have to see how that's all going to be configured it's going to depend on what we decide to do and what we spend so hopefully it will but it may not right we're getting this out of esther money it's definitely a necessary speed so right i mean we gotta

102we gotta continue to operate until we know for sure right at your point well taken the last thing we want to do is engage in projects that would be redundant or do something different right you know band-aids exactly we'd be able to relocate sometimes repurpose relocate yes uh but then also we're using as for funds which is use or lose it right absolutely an offer up um so any other questions on the venom okay so i may have a motion that the board of education approved the lowest proposal from oak brook mechanical services inc that includes the base proposal less the alternate deductions of 5400 for a total cost of 38 thousand 148 dollars for the installation of a unit ventilator thank you thank you uh yes figaro yes hey yes yes and motion passed

103disposable of surplus district property so we do have some desks that these are older desks that are one piece desk so they're not probably the most conducive for high school kids i guess i would say i have a hard time personally even not that i'm sitting here but all day but they are a little bit you know on the small side i guess you will i could say the other thing uh so we replaced them with furniture that was paid for with esther so it was really to promote social distancing better configurations easier to you know reconfigure classrooms and small work groups and things like that so those desks have come in we've deployed them throughout um most of the building we still have a few to put out there as we're you know we're

104running out of space so we need to remove these in order to bring on the new ones so that that's kind of where we're at right now so um we do have uh we were contacted by one of the private schools in town uh catholic schools that asked for some desks i uh we're recommending that we provide the 60 desks to them the other ones um we'll get you know remove them in the most responsible way that we can you'll either sell them or there's other schools that have an interest that want to take some but we do have i think i put on there 900 and that's we're saving some to to you know keep here but we're not getting rid of all of them the majority of will be we're recommending to move

105out and make room for the new ones that we have now patty did you have a question did you i thought you might okay uh then i may have a motion to uh for the board of education to approve the attached resolution of the reside authorizing disposal of surplus personal property i'll make the motion second thank you roll call please figueroa yes hayden yes galwood yes redzinsky yes team pogba yes the motion passed next is the course catalog the 2022 2023 fenton high school course catalog michelle that's me and i'm even i get my own clicker usually this is a pretty special thing nobody ever gets one of these so thank you jim um we i'm going to present you our course catalog proposal for next school year um this is probably the equivalent to

106the school budget that bruce does in the in the curriculum and instruction world we presented around this time every year so we can start course selection and registration and scheduling can you have your microphone just a little bit closer yes is that better yeah thank you um so this is a lot of long-term planning that goes into not just about pulling the actual catalog together but all the content that goes in it and this one's particularly exciting i think for a lot of people because it's a major overhaul that we've been working on for a while in our elective areas and we're excited to share it with you it's pretty it's probably the most significant changes we've created in the course catalog since i've been here so hopefully in a good way and hopefully you

107all feel like that by the time i've taken you through this i'm going to try and take a step by step so it's pretty very clear and it's well outlined exactly what changes took place and why but i also i'm not going to keep us here till 11 o'clock at night so hopefully um let's so i'm going to take you through the career programs of study first because that's one of that's where the major overhaul is taking place then i'm going to just outline what exactly are the new courses and what exactly are those archived courses most of them will be in those career programs of study then i'm going to actually take us into looking to the future a bit because there's some new courses and are planning that we'll introduce this year but

108they'll also be some for the following year although i'm not asking for approval on those this year i'm giving you a heads up of what's coming so you can kind of see the plan in its entirety and then miscellaneous revisions that are just like course name changes or minor revisions in the course catalog that to note finally i'll take you through some next steps so you know kind of what happens after this so we are going to begin offering career programs of study if you remember in our career pathways update last board meeting this was one of the goals of the career pathways committee and it stemmed out of some isb legislation some national legislation and there's been a ton of work on behalf of the elected teachers eric randa brian augustine who are a

109couple of our division leaders i mean this was a labor of love right it was a lot of work over the last year and a half to try and reorganize so why do we do these career programs of study oh that is very small i'm sorry first of all we needed more clarity and structure for students and parents during course enrollment i have a lot of friends with teenage kids right now and they call me all of the time during course enrollment time and say which elective should my kids take not all of them go to this school none of them actually but i it always makes me think well there needs to be some structure to this to make it easier to navigate how we make these course selections beyond that alignment to isb

110college and career readiness indicators one of those career readiness indicators is that our students can complete a program of study so if we build it into our system we already have one at least for them as well as the 25 community service hours so we're trying to build systems that will automatically make them college and career ready based on those indicators this is a big one we need to comply with the perkins grant to optimize our funding so how we chose courses course names course descriptions course sequence is all very much guided by the perkins grant because if we sequence courses the perkins so that's a federal grant but isb has its own particular guidelines so if we sequence courses in a certain way we get extra funding if we run certain courses to the

111specificity that the perkins grant has laid out we get more funding so we went through and hashed out every one of our courses and said does this qualify for funding what do we have to do to make sure it qualifies for funding and what order do we need to put these in to optimize the funding so that was a huge piece of this finally it presents our students with progressions of coursework that leads to deeper learning experiences college credit career credentials and workplace experiences so all of that is now really combined and meaningful and how they progress through their elective coursework i'll give you some examples so what is a career program of study it's a coordinated sequence of courses that includes employer-informed competencies credential and certification opportunities and college credit opportunities i provided some

112attachments and it has the career areas that we offer or the cr the career programs that study there's actually 15 in all when you take a look at all of them together and then i gave you some definitions of the course levels so let me take you through the career areas and then i'll take you through the course level descriptions so [Music] isb has one two three four five six seven seven major areas and we have from those seven major areas 15 programs of study that we'll be offering we used to have 32 different i think it was about 32 let's not quote me on that about 32 different areas represented but they were like single courses all over the place and when they're represented in single courses like that we don't optimize the funding

113and we don't give students the opportunity to go in depth in some of their learning so what we did was we narrowed and we focused and we narrowed it down to 15. i know it still seems like a lot but it was a lot less than what we had going on so these are our areas some of them are more general at this point because we're just not there in the planning to have it laid out in levels those are the ones that say general but any of the ones that do not say general multimedia communications musical arts visual arts finance business computer information technology health sciences technology culinary education law public safety government public administration nutrition wellness automotive trades building construction trades robotics engineering and manufacturing so what do i mean by these course

114levels and the coordinated sequence of courses we're going to have introduction courses most of them will be semester courses this is the first course in any program of study we want students to take more than one of these in their freshman or sophomore year take as many introduction courses as you need to because at some point you're going to have to pick a skills course and that skills course is going to be a year-long course it's really the it's really where the meat and potatoes of that career area take place and some of our programs will have advanced course sometimes that advanced course will take here take place here sometimes it might take place at tcd right and then we'll have workplace experience courses we want to encourage our students to participate in a workplace

115experience before they graduate we want our students to try on life when they can so those are two different things the skills and the workplace experiences two different things yes yeah skills is like the course work that would take place in our environment the workplace obviously on site students do not have to take an advanced course in order to go on a workplace experience right so we really want to encourage that so you'll see in our new courses there are i should have counted i'm going to say about 15 new workplace experience courses we had to organize them like that because of perkins funding we had to title them individually although we see those kind of being stacked together and one teacher might be teaching five of those areas at one time because they're helping

116facilitate on-site get them placements and things like that in terms of workplace experience like how what's the word i'm asking um how extensive is the list um hold on it's i think about 15 of them okay because each one of the programs of study has one if not two depending on okay so and how extensive they are in nature really depends on our partnerships that we've developed our manufacturing and our computer information technology workplace experiences are robust because we work in coordination with the roe and a not-for-profit called gps they help place our students they get them in whereas some of the other ones we're just trying to call the local accountant down the street and say will you take a kid and really work with them and we'll work with you with them right

117not in all of them this is very preliminary we've got them on the books but some of them are very initial at this point and that's going to be the goal of really drawing them out over the next couple of years here's some examples and i picked these i didn't go through all of them but i'm happy to talk about any one of them you want to i picked out the ones that i thought had some of the most impact on what we're doing so we used to have just a graphics production program which was great that students made t-shirts cups anything you can think of when we read the perkins document and said this isn't just about production this is really about the design the communication that you're trying to accomplish what are you

118trying to sell what do you what's the narrative there and how are you using your design to accomplish that as well as the production so we have to go back and we have to we have to rethink and call it graphic communications and production advanced graphics communication and production and then you'll see on some of these we have courses that will say beginning 2023-24 those are not new courses for this course catalog those will be for the following year but we're thinking ahead of what needs to be in there okay finance and business we're moving to they can either focus on entrepreneurship and then into international business and marketing or accounting principles in that financial piece so investment management this is new we cut a lot of business courses out like sports and marketing management

119and i'll go through them in a minute to really get this focused and we wanted to bring in the international business and marketing more than anything we thought that was a really important experience for students once again you'll see at the bottom of each of these there's college credit opportunity one is when a student takes a tcd class in multi in the graphics or multimedia and television production they actually already have dual credit aligned with dupage and for us if a student takes an ap course they can earn college credit if they earn that score of three are there automotive trades is another area you can see we have the opportunity as an advanced course for students once again to go to tcd or beginning in 2023 24 we want to focus on hybrid mechanics

120mechanics i'll be honest this might look like more electronic mechanics but this was the only course title available through perkins at this point so we we wanted to aim at those high demand high growth fields we are collecting data from students um we purchased a new program called you science where all the students kind of take aptitude and interest and we will be getting those results by the end of the semester is when the deadline is going to be for them to finish it so we can concur that our advanced course selections aren't going to be correct but we also want we've done the research on high wage high demand high growth fields to know what's going to be important for them to interrupt when we're talking about mechanics i got a sample and simple

121then my kid he learned it he mastered it he worked in the local business and that is the reason he entered into the marines because he was a mechanic and it stayed for i believe two three years and i just gonna say that program works whatever kid is interested if they want to master it they will yeah we also have to ensure that our teachers are qualified and educated to teach the new coursework so that's why it's still anticipated we have to dig a little bit deeper into some areas just to make sure that's going to work then we have robotics engineering and manufacturing we've always done pltw and it has always had robotics but we really feel like that word robotics needed to be in the title and we needed to emphasize to students

122when they're signing up for this yes thank you we needed to ensure that they know that they're going to be experiencing education in the area of robotics so we added that term in there and then in 2023 24 we anticipate adding pltw computer integrated manufacturing as well as p ltw environmental sustainability which might be great while we're partnering with our green energy partners maybe our kids can get involved as well so um once again we'll see at the bottom the workplace experience as well that's the only program of study that actually we haven't found a certification or a dual credit with so we will keep working towards that but you'll see in each one there's there's something on the bottom that's either a certification or dual credit can you utilize like the first robotics with

123that with the um that's a good idea yeah yeah that's a really good idea yeah we can add that in for next year and robotics probably includes automation and artificial intelligence um i would say the computer integrated manufacturing and the environmental sustainability will or the automation might show itself also in the computer sciences so um as we start to develop the advice because we have to have an advisory for each of these programs of study that we work with industry leaders or at least company partners that can help us and help inform how we continue to build these out so this is based on our knowledge some collaboration but we have to have an advisory for each one of these programs of study and that i think will help someone on stack right no it

124has to be a staff member student parent an industry professional and a partner and that could usually be like a college partner so i would hope that we would also have maybe a k-8 partner at that table too so that's um that's our next step with these programs to study this is just to kind of that's where you want to get it started because it likes the you know the fire there yeah and you know because if they have no interest i mean there's been no interest it's hard to do at this age my initial conversations with them have actually been great they're doing a lot in the stem areas which i think is great but we also have arts and communications and education and training that's i think another one if we look at

125education and training we are moving from a simple early childhood programming to early childhood and elementary education we want to open and broaden the scope of what students see as career opportunities not just in early childhood but kh as well so we will be moving to a situation where we will have students on site at elementary schools instead of bringing the kids in yes so so on the chart it said that early childhood had been archived yes so it's now early childhood and elementary education so a lot of those archives find themselves in the new courses for this year or the following year but some of and some of them are just combined into new courses some of it's gone like computer gaming but some of it's most of it's represented somewhere in here so

126um just for the sake of time how many more slides do we have not too much i'll keep going okay um building and construction trades is the other one i wanted to show you guys because we wanted to pltw civil engineering and architecture you know we had a conversation about architecture last year i want to make sure you all know it's this is what i was trying to allude to it's going to be repackaged in another form moving forward so that's where we hope to see it right now we do woods and we really want to see us move not just through woods but really building construction trades so they can move beyond just a wood shop and be exposed to a lot of different careers in the building and construction trades information technology is

127one of these as well so you're getting the sense the intro the skills the advance the workplace certifications college credentials those are the other ones down below i put them all in your packet so you can take a look at all of them if you have any questions i'm happy to what was that aws so that's the amazon web services they actually have their own site where students can go on and earn certifications that make them work ready and can have higher wage jobs even at age 18 sometimes even before so we want students to get and learn those skills of like behind the scenes networking i know it's not called behind the scenes networking but you know software networking and things like that and and amazon offers this opportunity yeah yeah amazon web services

128is it has the has the market on market share on on platform most websites most merchants have aws it's quite remarkable so it's good yeah so what i did here was i outlined for you just the new courses and the archived courses you pretty much saw all of them represented and what i just took you through at least most of them yeah not all of them the only one that's not in the elective areas is the community-based based learning that's actually out of special education um art we had life skills courses for students who really just our job with them is to get them ready for life and get them ready for career and what we're doing is we're blocking their social studies and science courses along with their consumer ad club course and we're

129giving them three whole periods together so they can actually get out into the community and practice life how they need to and that'll be called community-based learning and those are all of our archived courses looking to the future these are the ones that all said beginning 2023-24 foundations of teaching that will be a dual credit hybrid mechanics civil engineering and architecture environmental sustainability computer integrated manufacturing multimedia interactive design biomedical innovation and aws web services we had some miscellaneous changes like changing introduction to engineering to intro to engineering and robotics we changed business enterprise to entrepreneurship we changed nutrition and culinary to just plain culinary so our students weren't getting confused with another course that we already have internship is now called miscellaneous workplace experience all of our esl courses are going to be changed to

130ell or multilingual the state changes the way we represent those courses every so often and to be more inclusive in its language and that's kind of like what the vernacular is right now so we changed all of that in the multilingual services which was previously esl we are calling content reading content literacy just a very minor change ap computer principles is now grades 9 through 12 so it will be our first ap offering for freshmen and music production will be available for 9 through 12 we're hoping that helps with some of our music numbers and consumer education will now be available grades 10 through 12 where it was used to be just 11 and 12. so that can open up some more opportunity for elective further further down so what did you say about the

131community-based learning like if they go to tcd so this is for our um our students who have ieps that are um pretty significant in need and their transition planning has to be pretty significant because we can't just expect they're going to leave and be ready for life so we have to do some real heavy duty programming and actually let them experience life so this is to take them out into the community so that's it's for them yeah and then our next steps december if you all think and approve this motion tonight our students will be presented with these new course offerings and begin registering and when we get back from break counselors will start meeting with students to finalize those selections there will be a staffing plan developed and shared with the boe which is

132all of you in march and then in april and may we'll start creating the master schedule so all these things tied together so i've taken you through the programs of study thank you for your patience and um you know your interest in that new archived courses looking to the future miscellaneous revisions and next steps thank you and any other questions i'm i'm happy to go through anything this was a major overhaul so i appreciate you letting me take you through all of it i just want to applaud michelle for taking the board in regards to the whole journey not only did you see the course catalog but you see how a a school is scheduled for the next year how each one is interconnected from the student selection to the course catalog to the counselors

133to the master plan to staffing and so forth so that was fantastic yeah could i just do the same thing because she very modestly thanked the division leaders but the years and hours that she's put in collaboratively building these sequences um and for all to come together i know she's excited about it because it's the culmination of a lot of work over time so thanks michelle and one more thing a shout out you hear career pathways career pathways over and over remember when we were school you'd do high school figure it out when you go to college folks this is revolutionary we got a career pathway basically from ninth grade to where folks i want to hear stories 15 years from now you know fenton high school got me to that the automotive job straight

134from high school making 70 80 90 000 that's the kind of stories that's the kind i think the fruits of the labor that's being shown here uh will produce you know i remember hearing about cte right from when i first got on the board and how's that how important it is you know how that we you know take our kids if not everybody is classroom oriented and we need to get them into the trades and that's what's suffering and this takes them in a different direction um so i'm glad to see that there is the focus on that um i do have a few questions yeah absolutely okay so back to the english when you know 10 years ago we had oral communication and we had written communication but is that is the oral communication

135just kind of like gone by the side of the world no in terms of our english classes we have competencies in every one of our english english courses for reading writing listening and speaking so the listening and speaking is now fully integrated into the courses so it's not just i'm going to learn it over here in this class but i'm going to learn it in every english class i take okay so um on the workplace experiences and it says you know that that you get high school credit for these yes how do how are these graded how are these evaluated to right so we have um employability competencies that we um ensure that the students are self-monitoring themselves on the businesses are monitoring them on and we're monitoring them on there's a couple typos that

136i can show that you know i'm sorry there there actually was another mistake where i accidentally put algebra automotives 2 as being archived but it's not being archived we're keeping it so um sorry about that so i noticed in the reading courses that it said stuff about common core standards i thought we didn't have common core anymore no they're based there's courses that are based on common core we don't use that as our sole standard set we take a look at like for science let's say it's ngss as well as common core as well as sd standards and we've brought them together in competencies per department but reading is a pretty our sole source of most of those standards come right out of common core there's not another set of like reading standards nationally that

137we can refer back to on that it happened before common core it's illinois state standards and that's pretty much the same thing okay in the past i've noticed that like we have distinct math tracks like you you're going back you know math one to three or you're going to go accelerated but the course when i was looking at the book it was there there's like no pathway to follow like so it seems like it would be confusing to me as a student or parent to try to figure out like well what classes am i supposed to be taking is there a better way to lay it out or is there or am i thanks that's fair enough um yeah right where you have these programs of study and like what the level courses are for

138that but we don't necessarily have the the um the distinct pathway there's a reason for it but i also can understand putting that in in the future with a change to integrated math um we we we don't want to pin students into a track either we want to make sure that if students are ready to move into an accelerated coursework or an ap course work they're not just thought to be in one singular well you could have it like this yeah you could do like this they could go to here if you're here or they go here here you know it becomes pretty webby um so as we work through those webs we're like you know what we can explain this to families when they come in especially if they're going to be um recommended

139for an accelerated coursework and the teachers do a really nice job of helping students understand their pathway through that you know so you know if you're in ninth grade you can't take the 12th grade yeah or so right because i had kids in both tracks you know so i know that there was some fit some places that others didn't yeah um when they're we have a lot of bilingual classes so are the classes taught primarily in english with spanish assistants or how are bilingual classes taught because so this would be a real disservice to them to only speak in english yeah no their their goal is to help them develop english proficiency that's the goal they can't do that without speaking english with them but they also there's some there's definitely times where they have

140to resort back to um you know native language to ensure understanding so no it's a combination it's a multilingual approach um and there's a difference between the el right english language learning classes or english language and literature courses versus the bilingual right like those are the students who are testing on access score at a level one or sometimes a level two that means they're their english language is very limited in terms of the proficiency so i think our teachers do a really nice job of balancing that i mean i i know kids are prepped in those bilingual classes to say certain things in the hallway um like they'll come up to me and be like i like your shoes and then i'll hear it from another kid seven minutes later i'm like oh they're working

141on a compliment right so um no they they do both languages for sure okay all right i would i hope so because yeah like i said i think it would be a disservice for them not to be exposed to more english and you know yeah no i've observed the classes and they're definitely using both and lean towards the english okay and now the um the civics class we have one semester in civics and social studies and it seems like it would be that there's so much else in there too that i don't think the kids are getting a lot of civics they're getting their civics um i i don't mean to to counter your argument there but um there's there's civics embedded in nearly every project that they do we're required to do a semester

142of physics or physics of civics we do a semester of civics so i can get you more information on it if you if you would like okay um and one last thing um i noticed that you're decreasing the amount of service hours that they need to do yeah community service and i i would like to make them recommend that we increase the mandatory service hours to 40 hours for graduation because it really is easy to get service hours yeah we made an adjustment this year due to the pandemic yeah so because if you look at the pain on what year like last year there could be some virtual opportunities or maybe some opportunity so that that that was the driver for that it wasn't not to emphasize it was simply for that reason i mean

143like working at the food bank you know they could do five hours they could get 25 hours in you know in a month easily by standing outside and passing out food on saturday morning you know it's the hours are there the help there's there are plenty of places out there that need help and maybe we just i'd love to see more service learning in our social studies courses and english courses and all of those as well i i'm not disagreeing with that i'm just saying where we stay where we where we had to go this year with the pandemic let's try to understand that last year there were probably not enough opportunities for them yeah right students were not allowed to do some sort of course but now things are open and i don't and

144i think that we should not say oh well sorry you can do it but well no let's get adventure some let's look for other opportunities let's figure out other ways can you help somebody read you know can you read to them online you know things like that there were definitely ways to do it and to be get creative and i know i think that we should you know encourage them to do that because the you know the service opportunities are out there i think it's fair to say we're not discouraged your kids i remember speaking during graduation and our requirement is 40. but there are some kids who are doing thousands remember thousands of community services there are some kids who are like barely squeaking out twenty five minutes and i think we gotta yep

145i totally agree um one side of that is that you know if you look at our some of our flyers or not so high flyers there they they just are out of time they're exhausted they still have to be kids they got to get their sleep and there's many of our kids who are working 30 40 hours uh on on a weekly basis so we got to be cognizant of that as well um so i think we need to have some studies in regards to where it was um and where we want to go and we need some voices from the students we need some voices from the parents as well as the board members obviously but we also want to protect that family time for our kids so we've got to look at this

146holistically we're one of the rare schools in illinois that that require uh community service and we're proud of that um and um but to increase it all of them by 10 hours 20 hours i think we need a a definitely a discussion a third discussion which involves many of our stakeholders but if if that's something that we we need to do but but let's do it after the pandemic i think that's that's fair to say um let's not also forget we're encouraging hey look on top of your community service we also want you to take at least one extracurricular right we're doing that because we know if you take an extracurricular course your gpa goes up usually by a whole percentage point right and so forth so we're also trying to make sure they participate

147at school on extra girl that's that's just one aspect of it but yeah if we need to make that study um we will yeah and if we have to go back and amend the course catalog for that piece of the catalog because it's represented in there then after we have this discussion or study we can go back and do that then we've we've gone back and made minor adjustments like with fees last year we we amended the catalog so we can do that after we go through those discussions for sure that's if we approve this one tonight so um any other questions i just have a couple um is there you know in terms of perkins grants and and maximizing the the opportunity that we have here do we have a projection on how much

148it's going to increase or i don't know um they just they they've restructured it twice on us in the last year and we're not quick to um to get all the information that we need well we had enough to design these now we we will be going through a needs assessment um from some of this work we've done and some of the work that we're doing right now but i don't have that projection but i can look into that sure sure um and then as far as the community workplace program um just imagining you know one of my kids going to get these jobs do we i'm sure we've thought about it but i just want to vocalize it in terms of vetting the environment that they're going to be working in you know just

149on that level do we have a i'm sure we have a process in place yeah we do right now we have one we've had an internship course here for quite a while we actually have a compiled list of most um employers that are willing to work with us that we've had partnerships with for years but we're also establishing new ones and a lot of those are being established with the help of um regional office of education and a not-for-profit called gps okay and they were really experienced in that too but there's definitely a process thank you of course um i just do want to echo what sam and james said about appreciating the vision and the the dedication the passion the effort the work the collaboration the thoughtfulness that went into this uh i i

150see it and i appreciate that uh do we have any other questions guys okay then we will take a vote on it um so may have a motion uh that the board of education approved the 2022-2023 fenton high school course catalog as presented i'll second that motion okay thank you guys and uh mary can you get a roll call please figaro yes paid yes galloway yes redzinski yes ting po pong yes and motion passed um next agenda is our um 2021-2024 seiu contractual agreement uh um it's been long awaited it's finally here it was ratified by seiu and we would like to recommend that the board approve this contract yes and shout out to patty who said in all of negotiations thank you for patty and this ratification so uh questions there's no questions we're

151just going to go right is everything as presented nothing's changed yes sir uh may i have a motion that board of education approved the 2021-2024 contractual agreement between the service employees international union the seiu and the board of education as presented i'll make that motion thank you john thank you silvia roll call please mary paid yes galloway yes bredzinski yes figueroa yes tinkpop yes bush and passed uh now we get to the discussion only items the 2021 resolution uh committee report this is that packet we have here discussions questions the uh bisbee resolution if you have an introduction oh sure um you know i i'm sure you guys had a chance to look through it um you know school board we're in an we're we're school board members and these are recommendations based on our

152association um it is not law so there's something to keep in mind um but it is up to us to decide you know what parts of it represent our values of our school our constituents you know how we want to lead the school but a lot of it is consistent i think with what we're we're looking to do but uh i i'll start um let me go through this my notes here um number one is do you guys have any questions about the resolution i know it's pretty extensive can you make a suggestion president yes sure i think we should move to this as you know the back um the the task was to read this and if there are no questions any suggestions we follow the recommendation of your association so we i could

153start we could we could help with if there's any clarification let's start if there's two or three questions in particular but it's pretty straightforward to that was there something that wasn't confusing to folks that we could clarify hit you wanted to go first was there something yeah you know i i looked a lot of it over you know it was pretty expensive so some things that um not so much that i'm against but just want to make notes on is you know student safety and protection plan which is item 2 the the green and clean and green energy we were talking about how we have programs in place our our associations also a proponent of um you know illinois legislation that is a proponent of uh sustainability as well which helps schools like us fund

154projects um you've got the one thing that i saw too is how we're how the association is in a proponent of um landscaping fund which we talk about flooding all the time so this would be something that we'd want to get behind um and then the what number is that uh this is the uh number 13. yep i said no you said no to that i think we should keep it local i think any you know that that should be something that we do locally when you when you when when we look at at that uh statement or the resolution as i understand it it's a proponent of getting funding for um from the congress of the united states from the national right yeah and you know why not um i mean of course we

155can do local and we can make decisions on our own as well but it gives us the only thing is is the more the more it's not a local thing the more you are at you don't get to make decisions locally so if we're taking funding from a federal source and we don't get to make decisions locally right but we do make decisions on accepting those funds or not so why urge the congress the united states to um well that gives us funding sources so when we look at when we well if this is this is again how i see it um when you look at sources of funding also the the climate of financial uncertainty that we're in um it's always good to have options in my mind not that we'll take the funding

156but at least if we're provided that option to see the agreement um you know it again i i just appreciate that option no not go ahead no okay there isn't they recommend to say nothing and again without i believe it's not going to pass believe me is this just a proposal right so the proposal is going to take forever how many how long 10 15 years 20. so we're going to be waiting 20 years for that not only that yeah point taken yeah that's actually a really good point because it states the board shall urge congress to do something so you know i don't know that's necessarily going to translate into any quick action i think it's your point right leo yeah okay any other uh uh statements uh the other one that made was

157i was i was noted on as 18 which is charter schools just the treatment funding just look at this history of chicago schools how they are so we're going to accept that charter school so our kids are going to be selected they got to make a test in order to be accepted in this school i said no they have to test be accepted yes and it's chicago in order to go to those schools they got to be tested yeah i was just gonna say when i read all through all these charts i mean clearly there's some sections you could you know see who who's submitting this where there's a charter school movement i'm not familiar with one developing around here but in areas where there is the issue becomes you know what is the role

158of school district versus the charter school and for 18 basically it looked like they were just trying to establish that there is some role for the local school board however i mean honestly i mean is it a moot point in our community i don't know of any movement towards charter schools uh so that's some food for a thought here's the big picture with charter schools okay charter schools are putting in schools all over illinois to compete with public education that's number one what does that mean to compete it's all about funding okay so the government is basically saying hey look this isn't what uh there's one definitely gurney right that that they're battling there and um it's basically taking public education money and putting it to another school okay so the this one right here

159for 18 is saying you're you're doing this in our community and there is a five-year authorization so to stay another five years we want some voice in that process they do not have any voice in that process let's say there's a charter school down the street here that opens up they're taking our funding that we talked about whether it's grant funding whether state rendering whether it's foot federal uh funding so we one where we can't feed our kids when we're not getting perkins grant okay they're doing that and it's hurting our school right and it's going to be authorized again for another five years we got no say into it what this is saying is that this board our board the board of education can ask questions at least or can resist that reauthorization get

160community voice on that that's what this is really talking about when you hear charter school think about funding think about funding and you guys know charter school is not a public school okay we take all kids okay students with ieps ell bilingual okay it's selective over there okay so that's what this is all about that's why it's recommend to adopt your association says adopt this we want a little we want some skin in the game we want our voice to be heard and yet there are a lot of charter schools like like the next one about um schools that at risk students i mean there are charter schools up in arlington heights and you know that have alternative some alternative education that and and they're it's they're open to the public i mean it just

161gives the parents a choice as to where to send their child right give some like if one school is better for them than like say the public school like maybe this at-risk school is better for their child and so it gives them a charter school gives the parents a choice doesn't it well this one is really saying is like what i said earlier they do not have to take at risk they do not have to take elo that that they're saying is if you're going to do that you better take some of all students right and what this will come out to think about that right if they don't have to take all students okay one of those entities of public education and charter are going to have all those students and i don't mean

162anything like that a particular type of students so we've got to be really be careful with that one right now as you know it's a selection process for the to for for some of the charter schools and they're being very selective and i wonder which students are they choosing so once again charter school it's funding it's selective those are the key words and you're going to hear this over we're going to do this again next year charter school where is your association lining up to this it's very clear we want to protect them our our funding we want to protect public education yeah this that's why i brought this stuff was because this is going to come up um the way i understand the association is um we want to keep public schools democratized right

163so not privatized and there's you've got you've got the public schools that are subject to school board and democracy where votes are constitutional constituents where uh charter schools and you know partly privatized but also getting entitled funding so where what the association stands again from what i understand is they're trying to protect uh the funding for us and also promote school boards right i think in that statement right here i'll read it what it says what your association say saying without a legislative cure state authorized charter schools are allowed to perpetuate discriminatory practices that's the key word there that at risk we know what they're talking about there right to deter at worst students to enroll in their schools okay okay your association recommends to do adopt that okay so that doesn't happen so our

164adoption is not supporting the schools it's protecting our rights and our funding correct you read it all the way true we're we're protecting ourselves correct so we're healthy voice by adopting this it's not that we're supporting them we're correct got it all right so yeah i i i players right these are the ones that's a common theme through all of whatever the yeah there's three of them be right 18 19 and 20 are all basically when you really get down to it and read deep and 21 kind of but not directly they all say basically the same thing in different ways imagine that any other discussions there's a lot of wisdom in your association as you read through this and they've been they've been at this game for decades and decades there's some grace there

165so it's if you have questions there we still got this kid's going to take that vote on saturday there's still time on that so you could have that one-on-one conversation are we are we satisfied with the discussions though here um do you are we vote are we letting you know our opinion are you going to are we going to go through and take votes or what um yeah we can okay we can let's do that i mean is that is that i don't it's really your call this is your association my do you want my i do not want to give you my recommendation but it seems like you guys want to just put a thumbs up thumbs down that's what i'm saying i could take that for you and you can go through it

166um kit and i got the cheat sheet here i was really just so you know i was ready to follow the recommendations as presented so yes that was my position to follow the recommendations just a minute because they are saying enough that don't adopt yeah and i was comfortable with those if anybody is different than that i'm just letting you know right now that was the homework right right as as the recommendations of the committee i didn't have any real severe disagreements i was on defense on a couple of them but it is the association of the whole state not just us and we don't necessarily have to follow their recommendation it's just another tool in our toolbox so i was ready to just follow the recommendations as printed nothing jumped out at me to

167where i was countering that okay some other people may i'm so i'm i'm good i'm out that's good this way in this way depending on what it's like sylvia is a good vote yeah i'm a good vote i'm just seeing if any of mine disagree with uh okay good yeah that's that's that's part of the exercise yes absolutely yes i guess i wasn't a very good teacher to give out homework i guess dr benson here did you grade the homework no you know what i stated earlier was items that i thought was good for discussions on number eight do we know anything about the science of reading reading curriculum sure let's say number eight is it i mean is it it sounds like it's just going back to like basic phonics okay there is a

168uh michelle you could help me out this way there's a war in reading right there is whole language where you you read right and it comes out you know being an uh an immigrant and an ell student um i wouldn't say it right but i'm trying right and there's strictly phonics and what this is saying is that um what this uh number eight is saying is science of a reading curriculum elementary at the elementary level right right and they what your association is it's too restrictive it just can't be phonics some folks are good at phonics and that's it you know some folks just want to do purely phonics some folks just want to do whole language all right and what they're i think best practice is this just me i'm stepping in here you

169got to do both right some kids are not always the same and that's why your association is recommends do not adopt this one district here in waukegan saying we just want to do phonics okay that's a quick version of it okay so providing choices okay so um number seven indigenous people curriculum inclusion i i i know it says recommends to adopt and i i would think that it's part of our us history why is what is the what is what would be different about um i mean we should be learning about the native american culture as all part of our u.s history isn't yeah um you know someone that last year went through the the four-year probes through the roe of what's required what's required there are so many things that are required exactly like

170you said that we do like you have to teach the holocaust or you have to you know there's a wide variety so i think honestly many of those things to your point patty were like check check check check but i think i think what they're saying is that they want to have that up there with some of the other requirements that the districts should be doing i i agree we would already be doing this but i guess you know when you look at the recommended recommendation to adopt that would be consistent with like four years from now when we go through the same process there's going to be more areas where it is mandatory that you need to demonstrate curricularly that you're providing that kind of instruction so so even if even if it was

171mandated we would take our curricular resources and say yep we do it right we already do it exactly which a lot of times that's what happens they give us a mandated unit of study and then we go back and we look at our curriculum we said yep it's there a lot of times it's nothing new okay and number 10 i say no drug money no drug money okay for cannabis funding yeah i don't want 20 percent of the drug mine another perspective that just throw it out there it's once again it's a money resource absolutely and cannabis is legal um um if you're 18 years old just like generally it's not legal i mean you can't in the military you can't smoke beef smoke and pot so it's only legal in certain states i'm just

172saying it's it's still drug money you know and i think morally i think it would not be the right thing to do so i would say no on number 10. it's my vote yep we accept the vote um so no on that for patty um any other questions okay thank you patty all right so if nothing else we'll move on okay committee reports go with bensonville community foundation anything going on no okay uh board dei committee nothing's going on there um finance facilities we went through that today nothing going on um i just got signed on as a delegate so i have nothing to report we have a delegate meeting this coming saturday and we just went over uh some of the resolutions here today lend you have a meeting on monday yeah okay and

173uh board policy committee we've got a bunch of to go over next month next month just before that sure uh the de committee when you guys gonna meet it's been uh a while well you know i think i think we we haven't really defined meetings but i think me and silva need to get get with it on that so yeah let's let's report back to you guys next next uh next meeting and we'll have something uh decided does that sound good perfect no no no just my question is when because it's been uh a while since that committee was formed and we haven't heard anything from you guys yeah no but uh still well we've reported a couple times but it's been a while you're right yeah thank you um the okay so with that

174the next board meeting is wednesday december 15 2021 at 7 00 p.m with a board policy committee meeting scheduled at 6 p.m prior to the regular meeting um now we're going to go into closed session so may have a motion in a second to go into closed session for the purpose of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of the public body that is subject to the local government wage increase transparency act may not be may not be closed and shall be open

175to the public and posted and held in accordance with this act uh five illinois cs120 uh two c one in collective uh negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees five illinois cs 122 c2 and the selection of the person to fill a public office as they find an open meetings act including a vacancy in the public office when the public body is given power to appoint under law ordinance or the disciplined performance or removal of the occupant of a public office when the public body is given power to remove the occupant under law or ordinance five illinois cs 122 c3 may have a motion please so we'll tell a yes and we're in closed session do you guys

176want to take a break real quick into open session and do i have a motion to adjourn yeah go ahead emotionally adjourn this meeting okay roll call please figaro yes hey yes yes uh motion pass we are returned thank you thank you for taking it out thank you james